Breakthrough In Cancer Detection : New Technique To Diagnose 100 Days Earlier Than Traditional Methods

Chief scientific officer of oncology at Natera, Jimmy Lin, is pioneering early detection of cancer DNA in the bloodstream. The best way to maximize chances of survival among cancer patients is catch the disease as early as possible, and Jimmy Lin thinks he’s found the new gold standard in detection: a blood test.

In a recent TED talk, he revealed his grand scheme of taking down cancer with the help of a simple blood test that looks for small signals of cancer’s presence in the blood, in turn detecting the recurrence of some forms of the disease 100 days earlier than traditional methods.

This groundbreaking project could be a ray of hope in a fight where early detection makes all the difference.

The World Health Organisation estimates there are about 14 million new cases of cancer every year, and predicts that figure will double by 2050. Currently, eight million people are killed every year by the disease.

By combining early intervention with an understanding of cancer genomics, however, mankind could be on the cusp of fighting cancer effectively and at scale. “We are at the intersection of three of the most exciting revolutions in cancer therapy,” Lin said.
With his

colleagues at John Hopkins University, Lin was among the first researchers to fully sequence the genome of cancer cells. Now, pursuing a second revolution in cancer studies, Lin said “We can start thinking about the ways we can start detecting DNA from cancer in your body at very early stages,” he explained. Blood is like a CCTV system for the human body – every drop contains barely detectable indicators that give clinicians clues about what’s going on in different parts of the body.

Early detection is instrumental in curing cancer. If it’s detected at a late stage, ovarian cancer kills 90 per cent of women diagnosed with the disease. Catch it in stage one, Lin said, and that fatality rate drops to 20 per cent.

Lin and his team at Natera have developed extremely sensitive blood tests which can detect the earliest traces of cancer DNA within the bloodstream. His blood tests can detect one cancer molecule hiding among 10,000 other innocuous molecules. “If there’s even down to one centimetre of cancer in the lungs, we can find it,” Lin said.

The study, now published in the journal Nature, showed that out of 24 cancer patients studied over time, the blood test picked up their cancer DNA 93% of the time and produced no false positives. The test also managed to detect cancer reccurence as early as 11 months before traditional methods.

Lin conceded the data aren’t perfect, even if the test seems to work. And says his future studies are aimed at increasing the sample size to hone in on the specificity of the test – or the ability for it to pick up one kind of cancer and not just cancer DNA in general.

As the company pursue that goal, Natera will make the blood test available for research use on cancer patients later this fall. At some point in 2018, armed with better data about which cancer varieties the test screens for best, Natera plans to launch a cancer-specific test for clinical use.

It is indeed undisputable that the final key to the cancer treatment revolution is understanding how our own genetics make us more likely to develop certain cancers. The more we know about which genes are linked to cancer, the more we can target early detection tests to people at risk of developing the disease.